How many lives can one person live? I think about this question a lot. Before I dicsuss it I'd better define what I mean by the question - how many lives can one person live?

We all only have one life so the answer is obviously - one. Yet, within that life, we have many interests, friends, family, careers. We also have many sub aspects of each to think about - are we keeping up with friends enough, are we spending enough time with our family, money responsibilities, career responsibilities etc.

There are so many things to think about that it's a wonder we get anything done at all.

By "lives", I mean significant areas of your one life, that you have to devote time to periodically. And by "have to", I mean choose to. I'm fully aware that saying choose to is not how most of us feel about our responsibilities. It is true that some of the things we must devote time to we really have no choice. I'm thinking about things like taking care of an elderly relative or our children. We want to do these things, they must be done and no-one else is going to do them for us. I would say that even with these things, there are choices about how much time we devote to them.

Time is the key to this discussion and your priorities should determine how much time you have available to devote to your many lives.

I saw the movie Eat, Pray, Love and among the many things that book\movie made me think about, is what it would be like to live somewhere completely at peace, spending time meditating, without a great deal of responsibility. Especially since my life isn't anything like this. It sounds like a great idea, and don't get me wrong, there are aspects of this I would give my right arm for every day, but overall, it sounded boring.

However, I remember as a twenty something having seemingly endless time and virtually no responsibility. It is a symptom of being over thirty that our time is diminished and the amount ot things we must pack into our time always seems greater than what is available. I read a survey that concluded that people in their twenties and those over sixty are among the happiest, simply because they don't have so many things pressing on their time and hence much more time.This post could have been called time, because that is what it is all about really - isn't it.Well, yes and no. I would argue it's about priorities.Imagine you were in the movie Eat, Pray, Love. Every day you got just the right amount of sleep. You didn't have to dash out to catch the train or reach work on time, you had to eat a healthy breakfast and go to your meditation class, where you - meditated. OK, that's a bit simplistic, but imagine you had a clean slate instead, no responsibilities, nothing to do, no money worries, good health, great friends and family and it all took care of itself. One by one you had to put the things you do now back into this empty space and decide how much time you would spend on them. I think the only way to do this is to attach value to each thing that uses up your time. If it takes five minutes per day, week or month, it probably doesn't matter how much it means to you, you will be able to fit it in - unless you have so many five minute things you can't get anything done. If you spend three hours a day doing something, it really should be something that means a lot to you. If you are doing something for three hours a day that doesn't mean anything to you AND you have other things that you are not doing, but mean a great deal to you, then you haven't got your priorities sorted out.Keep a diary of what you did in a day and how long you spent. Keep a list of things you wish you were doing. Recognise that perhaps there are things you do while others around you are sitting watching television. Perhaps they could be sharing the burden?So how many lives can you lead?Can you be a Doctor at the same time as a Rocket Scientist? Probably not because they both need a lot of time.Can you be a writer, a Doctor, a father, a keep fit fanatic and keep up with all your friends? Probably, if you have stopped doing things that don't mean a lot to you.Ask yourself where you want to be in five years. If you are happy being where you are then you probably have already sorted out your time and priorities. If you don't like where you are, then you may need to change your priorities and how much time you spend on each "life".